Research trends on benefits of implementing constructability, operability, and maintainability

Abstract

Despite allocating huge budgets to civil engineering projects, detailed planning, and employing human resources, project managers still face time, cost, and quality constraints. Most of these challenges are due to a lack of integration of different project phases and the limitations of the presence of construction and maintenance contractors in the initial stages of the project. Considering the benefits of applying constructability, operability, and maintainability (COM) concepts, many problems caused by lack of coordination, or duplications and weakness in management, and also time and extra costs due to lack of presence of construction and maintenance contractors in the early stages of the project are resolvable. In this regard, various studies have investigated the benefits of applying these concepts; however, there has been no comprehensive analysis of the benefits of COM. As a result of focus on the benefits of implementation of these concepts and evaluating the effect of each of these strategies and benefits, from different perspectives during various time periods, managers can increase project efficiency and productivity, and improve their performance, through using concepts and strategies of their implementation. This research aims to evaluate the trend of studies on the benefits of implementing constructability, operability, and maintainability in the construction industry. For that, the in-depth literature review method is applied. For qualitative analysis of the obtained information, descriptive analysis has been used. Then, the data was coded, and classified using Excel Software for quantitative data analysis. Finally, the charts presented were evaluated according to the classified fields of study. The necessity of performing such a study is significant because of the fact that a large share of a project’s problems, such as lack of plans’ integration and weakness of administrative system, and increasing time and cost, are due to lack of exchange of information and ineffective relationship between the design people and the construction and maintenance stakeholders, and ignoring the effects of design decisions on constructability and operability and maintainability implementation